


Help! I'm Having Second Thoughts About Dating A Student! And So Is My Student Boyfriend!

by Alexilulu



Series: Help! I Keep Getting Into Sexy Situations With People In My Life! [3]
Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: ANGST MOTHERFUCKERS, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 20:05:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11260008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexilulu/pseuds/Alexilulu
Summary: A sudden break in their relationship leads to both parties reconsidering the circumstances that brought them together.





	Help! I'm Having Second Thoughts About Dating A Student! And So Is My Student Boyfriend!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry in advance.

Weeks pass in a blur for them. Akira spends most nights at Kawakami's apartment or with her at Leblanc after playing the careful dance of avoiding Sojiro's notice and getting Morgana out of the room with a minimum of fuss. They develop in-jokes, watch bad tv shows Akira rents, use the bath house across the way together when the night attendant stops paying attention, and do a lot of disgusting things together, sexual or not. One day, Kawakami shows him a cheap smartphone she bought for herself that is several seasons out of date, and gives him the number.

 From then on, she begins sending him a semi-steady stream of risqué selfies and sexting, and he responds in kind, though the lack of a mirror in Leblanc makes some of the better positions to take shots from harder. Morgana treats this as a nuisance and pesters him about keeping on the schedule they've set for themselves as Phantom Thieves, but Akira's efforts in Mementos are halfhearted. Everyone can tell something is wrong, but none of them dare comment. The pressure comes to a head one night, when Morgana starts an argument.

 "Akira, it's been a week since we went and trained...What are we even doing anymore?" Morgana paces on the table next to the stairs, frustration clear in the swishing of his tail. "We're wasting time we could be using preparing for our next target!" Akira sits up from his position sprawled out on the bed, phone in hand, swinging his legs over the side and yawning.

 "Don't worry about it." He goes back to texting immediately.

 "Don't worry about it?!" Morgana jumps down from the table and crosses the bare room, fixing Akira in a deadly glare. "It's my job to worry about it! I have way more experience with the Metaverse than any of you, and I know that you don't survive there by just resting on your laurels and texting your _freakin' girlfriend_!" Morgana comes to a stop at Akira's feet, sitting down and continuing his doom glare upwards. Akira looks away from his phone and fixes him with a stare of his own, pitiless in its blankness.

 "Morgana. Let it go. Just relax, be like a cat for once."

 "I'm not a cat!" Morgana shakes his head angrily, growling. "You're way too relaxed, and you've been ignoring the team! I've seen how many unread notifications you have from them in the group chat, but your conversation with that teacher is up to date, isn't it?"

 "Are you going somewhere with this?" Akira looks back at his phone and returns to tapping away at a response.

 "You're spending way too much time with that woman, Joker, at the expense of practically everything else! If you keep this up, the team's going to fracture without a leader."

 "Morgana." Akira locks his phone and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. "Drop it. You're not going to win this conversation." Morgana paces at his feet, growling louder.

 "God, I can't believe you're actually our leader, you know that? If I'd known you'd lose all your drive the second you start...start...rrrrgh! When you start _fucking somebody_ , I wouldn't have made you the leader!"

 "You didn't make me the leader, Morgana, Ryuji and Ann did. And they would again in a heartbeat. Just take the night off, I'm out of here." Akira stands, picking up his bag. Morgana groans, jumping up on the bed and curling up.

 "This isn't over, you hear me?!" Akira waves without turning as he heads down the stairs and out.

 The next day, he's sending a reply complimenting Kawakami's latest just-on-the-wrong-side-of-tasteful cleavage shot, only for the messaging app to fail to send the comment. He tries to send it 3 times while he's riding the train home from class, only for the same message to pop up. He keeps trying on the street in Yongen-Jaya, but his phone screen changes from the messaging app to a rotating picture of a round cat head with no eyes and a shark-tooth grin. He frowns, looking up from the screen and finding Futaba standing in the doorway, arms crossed.

 "We gotta talk, buddy."

* * *

 

The first day Akira doesn't show up to class, Kawakami puts it down to stress from the Phantom Thieves. Sure, there's no big high-profile confession unfolding right now, but it can't all be gigantic blockbuster reveals, can it? She's read the Phansite before, and knows people put in requests for much smaller changes of hearts, ones like the one Akira did that saved her from a life she’d rather not think too much about. He must be overdoing it, she figures. He always tries to be so good to her, that it stands to reason that he would be that considerate to others. What kind of guy gets into the stealing hearts business but one who feels compassion for others, right?

The second day Akira doesn't show up to class, she realizes that he hasn't kept up his near-constant text conversation with her. Even on days when he's been otherwise indisposed, he usually found time to say something to her about it. She sends messages from both her regular phone and the one she's reserved solely for the riskier aspects of their relationship, one she can dump quickly without also losing the vast amount of her life she keeps on her normal phone. Both messages reject as being unable to be sent. She experimentally texts a friend, and gets an immediate response, so she starts to worry, a little. Maybe he broke his phone while he was sick, who can say. No need for worry yet, just give him some time. _You didn't used to need someone this badly, Sadayo_ , she mentally chides herself. Still, she finds herself missing the instant coffees left on her desk every morning.

The third day Akira doesn't show up to class, she calls his guardian. A young girl picks up, probably middle school, and says that Akira's got a bad flu and won't be in for another day or two. He's recovering nicely, though, she says. Kawakami restrains herself from saying anything untoward, but tells the girl to wish him well and that she would email him the homework he's missing. She spends the rest of the day fretting. Had he been sick the day before in class? He seemed distracted, moreso than usual. She wants to put it down to stress, remembering her own hospital stay in the not too distant past from her work. Then she considers just how much they have in common with their nightly activities, former and current, and starts worrying more.

Kawakami's night job never sat well for her. She needed the money desperately, and had been complimented on how well she cleans up, both literally and metaphorically, by previous partners, and figured 'what the hell, why not'. Worst case, they tell her she's too...too whatever, too fat, too old, to ugly, too strange, to work for an escort service. And that's really all it was, a dressed-up escort service that incidentally catered to lonely people who might not be willing to pay for sex, but were definitely willing to pay for someone to clean up their messes and talk cute to them in the process. The ‘clean’ side of the job appealed to her sensibilities more than the escort work, but with the prices her debtors were naming, she wasn't in any position to argue.

All of them had stage names, of course; a natural requirement for anyone who wants a work-life separation in a job as intimate as theirs has to get acclimated to holding two versions of themselves in their mind. Becky was born out of that, Sadayo taking the name from her massage therapy trainer in Canada who taught her most of everything she knows. At first, Becky was little more than a pseudonym, a false mustache of an identity for her to conceal herself behind.

As the job grew more intertwined with her life and she had to work to devote more and more time to it, Becky grew and grew until she found herself thinking of herself more as Becky than vice versa. The school day was an irritation that she dealt with admirably, and the night job a burden that would be borne by someone else who just happened to live inside her. Becky could suck dick like a champion and say 'thank you, Master' with a nyaa~ to the salaryman who had to spend 20 minutes getting himself going with glimpses of her panties while she dusted and swept, and Sadayo could get up the next morning, put on some lip balm and deliver a lesson on the finer points of subject-object theory to her class.

It tore her apart inside at times, but what other choice did she have? Teaching meant everything to her, even if her students irritated her at the best of times and her coworkers loathed her, and this let her continue to do the job she loved. So what if she gagged at the thought of ever meeting one of her clients in public? What does it matter if she cried herself to sleep the first night she had to let herself be penetrated by a man 20 years her senior for over an hour so she could make the deadline for her debts?

She worried over this for hours, sitting at her desk long after the school day ended, staring at the failure to send notification in her message app. Was Akira in as deep with something awful that she had been? He had pulled her out of the muck, given her a new life, but what if he'd been sucked in to match? She really had no proof that he was a real Phantom Thief, he could just be a dumb kid who took on her debt and now is working himself into the grave to keep her happy and whole. And she was happy now, and whole now. She hadn't thought about Becky for months until now, a mask she had hung in the closet in the back of her mind and abandoned, never to be found again until it was lost to memory. One she never hoped to have to see again.

Sighing angrily, she stuffed her phone into her bag and stood. He won't talk about the things he does, despite her best efforts to get him to open up. She knows their relationship is ridiculously uneven; Akira does nothing but accommodate her, be the sweetest person in the world to her, and he refuses to let her in any deeper than he wants to. She knows what happened to him to bring him to Tokyo, he's at least candid about what his criminal record really is, but beyond that trying to get details of his life from him is like talking to a brick wall. She knows he hates romance movies, has trouble with writing kanji properly, his favorite dish to prepare is homemade super-spicy curry, and the approximate length of his cock (a skill no woman expects to possess until they find that they have it one day), but that's about it. Whenever she pressed him on this, he demurred until she was distracted by something else or he could shift the subject to something mundane. Sitting on the train home by some miracle, she tries one last time to send a message to him, but gets only more failure in response. She grumbles, putting her phone back in her bag.

 At her apartment, she trudges up the stairs slowly, yawning. When she opens her eyes at the top of the steps, Akira's leaning against the wall next to her door, hoodie drawn up over his face. Seeing her, he pushes off the wall in time to get very nearly knocked off his feet when she runs up and tackle-hugs him wordlessly. They stand there together for a minute, silent, while Kawakami buries her face in his chest and his arms hang limply at his sides. Eventually, she pulls herself together and releases him, straightening her shirt. Akira sighs, scratching the side of his head through the hood.

"We need to talk."

* * *

 

"So. You really stepped in it, fearless leader." Futaba twirls on her toes once Akira closes her bedroom door behind him. "Anything to say for yourself?" Akira, for his part, stands statuesquely still, his mostly-empty bag still slung over his shoulder. He looks down at her with a blank expression, sighing softly.

"Not sure what you're talking about, to be honest."

"Gonna make me break out the evidence?" Futaba cracks her knuckles, though they don't actually crack. Then she holds up her own phone, which is currently displaying a surprisingly well-shot selfie that features Akira's cock in the foreground, his face slightly out of focus but still visible in the background to confirm it's actually him and not just some half-nude man with fluffy hair. She swipes to the side on the screen, a slideshow of akira's penis in various positions and states of engorgement, even one where Kawakami's face is clearly visible as she is mid-blowjob, a surprised look upwards towards the viewer on her face.

"Oh, right. You've been tapping my phone..."

"You bet your sweet bippy, pal." Akira squints at her, but doesn't bother asking what that even means. "I put a block between both of your phone lines, so no more sexting for the moment. Now that the charges of fucking your teacher instead of leading the Phantom Thieves are before the court, how do you plead?"

"Not guilty." Futaba frowns at him and raises an eyebrow.

"Seriously? I've got like, 3 weeks of y'all horning it up and going to town on each other while we do nothing about the prosecutor's Palace! You really should turn off 'Hey Siri' sometime, because it just leaves the microphone on at all times, so I can listen to anything you say where your phone is." Akira rolls his neck, groaning.

"Okay, I get it. What are you going to do now?"

"Uhh, punish you? In case you forgot, we kind of all agreed that taking care of Makoto's sister is kind of a big deal." He nods, so Futaba continues. "So, we've got a few weeks left before we think the case will come together, so I figure I get to punish you personally for a little bit."

"Wait, why you?" She glares up at him, and Akira can't help but flinch. "Okay, nevermind. What am I doing, then?"

"You come here instead of school for the next couple days. I'll come up with something humiliating for you to do by then. Don't let on anything with Sojiro, and this'll be fine."

"Alright..."

"Great. Now get out of my room, because you disgust me right now." She spins on her heel again and hops into her computer chair, not looking over at him as he lets himself back out.

The first day of Akira's punishment, she makes him strip in front of her down to his boxers, and dresses him in a french maid cosplay that fits him like a glove. He spends the day cleaning the house from top to bottom while Futaba supervises and provides a running commentary of equal parts encouragement and scorn. Akira spends the day sweating through the thin, lacy material of the dress. Throughout, he can't help but think back to the first few times he hired Sadayo, more out of curiosity than anything else at the time. At least he didn't make her work as hard as Futaba is.

The second day of Akira's punishment, Futaba uses him as furniture the entire day. She takes a nap, and he is her hug pillow. She watches something on her computer, and she sits in his lap in the computer chair. When she's browsing the internet, he replaces the chair entirely, her standing on his back. At least she has the good grace to stop that one quickly and return to having another nap. Her hair gets in his mouth the entire time, despite his best efforts to the contrary. He doesn't sleep a wink the multiple hours she clings to him.

The third day of Akira's punishment, he opens the door with no small amount of trepidation, leaning into the room from outside to search for the punishment of the day. He only finds Futaba sitting cross-legged on her bed, indicating the bed in front of her "C'mon, get in here." Akira enters and mirrors her, sitting cross-legged on the bed. "Okay. Today's punishment..." She takes her chin in her hand and 'hmmmmmms' loudly.

"Can we just stop, already? I got the message the first day, we don't need to keep this up."

"See, I don't think you did." Futaba crosses her arms. "You're thicker than Inari and stupider than Ryuji, honestly. You've been here for two days and I haven't had a single apology out of you!"

"Apologize for what, dating my teacher?" Futaba grabs her pillow from behind her and presses it into her face, screaming with all of her tiny might. When she's done, she hits him across the face with it.

"You are so freakin' stupid! You abandoned me to have sex with your girlfriend basically nonstop since you got back from Hawaii and you can't figure out why I might be mad at you?" Akira snatches the pillow away and clutches it to her chest, safe from Futaba's grabby hands she makes towards him. After a moment, his face lights up in realization.

"Me? I? Oh, so..." Futaba freezes, a massive blush rushing to her face.

"W-wait, I meant us! The Thieves!" Akira leans in a little closer, smirking that perfect douchebag smirk he's perfected over the last few months.

"Oh, really? Are you sure about that? That this isn't about me and you, you jealous little gremlin?"

"Oh, fuck off, Akira!" She shoves him and crosses her arms again. "I hate that you're so good at seeing through people sometimes, you know that?"

"You wanna talk about this, then? I'll be your therapist as my punishment for today."

"Rrrrgh...fine. Teammates? _Being nice to each other?_ Have you ever seen how Skull and Panther bicker? Nice, my ass! You sly fucker, I poured my heart out to you and you friend zoned me like it was nothing!"

"Okay, first of all, the friend zone is a fake thing." She shoves him again, and he smirks. "Second of all, I really, truly, had no ulterior motive. You were in a bad place even after you joined us and I couldn't bear to see that happen to someone. I..." He sighs. "I'm a gigantic soft-hearted baby at heart, Futaba. Most of my friendships are me helping people work through their shit because it's basically all I know how to do." Futaba searches his expression for falsehood, then sighs.

"Yeah, I kinda figured. But...dude, you're tearing the team apart. Do you even read the group chat? We're at each other's throats, Ryuji's talking about taking over leading until you get off your ass! You want him driving Morgana around? Is that where this ends? Because I like Mona, and I don’t think I can fix him if Ryuji crashes him into a tunnel wall or some shit."

"...Shit." Akira ruffles his hair, looking down. "I...sort of knew, but..." He shakes his head. "I'm an idiot. I got too involved." Futaba takes his free hand, squeezing it.

"Look, Joker. You're an amazing guy, nobody like you, whatever, yadda yadda. But we need you more than ever, and you gotta choose, dude. This can't go on." He sighs, squeezing her hand back.

"Yeah. Fuck...alright. Well, it turns out my punishment is to break up with my girlfriend. Can I go do that now, then?"

"Whatever you wanna do, dude."

"Oh, well, in that case." Akira yanks on her hand, pulling Futaba into his lap, and he steals a long kiss from her before getting up, leaving her sprawled across her own bed, glasses askew. As he leaves, she gets up on her elbows and shouts after him.

"You son of a bitch, I swear to god, I'm gonna get you for that!" She slumps back down, covering her face with one hand while the other presses fingertips to her lips. "God damn it. I'm never gonna get over that asshole at this rate..."

* * *

 

The two of them enter the apartment quietly, sitting down next to each other on Kawakami's tiny couch. There, they both sit in silence for a few minutes, alone with each other and their thoughts. Kawakami fidgets with her hands in her lap, trying to collect her mess of thoughts and feelings and failing. Akira, for his part, is in a very similar position, hand folded together between his legs and staring straight ahead. When one of them speaks, the other starts as well.

"Sadayo..."

"Akira, w-"

 They both stop, grimacing. They turn to each other, shifting their positions. Sadayo places a hand on Akira's thigh, and he responds by putting his own on her hand, rubbing his thumb across the back of her hand and nodding for her to go first.

"Akira, what the hell is going on?"

"It's a long story. Kind of embarrassing, to be honest. Basically, I fucked up."

"Well, that doesn't sound like you." Kawakami tries to sound breezy, but just sounds tired.

"You'd be surprised, actually. I...look. Sadayo, you know how much I care about you. But..."

"But it's time we end it. I know." Akira's eyebrows go up when Kawakami's mournful reply comes.

"Wait, did you know?"

"What, that I've been taking advantage of you? Yeah, but I was too much of a coward to do anything about it but go with it." Akira grimaces.

"It's not like that, and you know it. I do the things I do for you because I want to."

"That doesn't make it okay that you do it, Akira! You're fucking 16, you know that? I'm a decade your senior, and the fact that you want it doesn't make it okay for me to rely on you like this! And clearly it's eating into your life, and we both know it. How often have you been here since that Sunday?" Akira lowers his gaze, staring at her hand on his thigh.

"..."

"Look...you changed my life. I'll always hold something special for you for that. But I can't do this anymore. It's not fair to you. You're a high school student, you should be with somebody you can go out in public with without worrying who sees you." Akira doesn't respond, and Kawakami takes his hand in both of hers, kissing it softly on the back. She leaves the ring etched with S & A on his finger. He sighs.

"Well, this is going better than I expected it to, somehow." Kawakami smirks softly, holding her hands in her lap again. "I'm sorry, Sadayo."

"Hey, none of that. We had a good thing while it lasted. And that doesn't mean I'm going to stop helping you with your homework. Just...none of the other stuff."

"I'll miss it."

"Yeah, me too. Well, my back won't mind, but you know." She stands, holding out a hand to Akira, who takes it and stands. "Are we okay? No...weird stuff?"

"Very little weird stuff, all things considered. I think we're gonna be fine."

"Good."

"Should I delete the photos you sent me?"

"Mmm...no. Just be good with them, or I will avenge myself mightily on you. Got it?"

"Got it. You can keep the ones I sent, if you want."

"Mmmm, we'll see."

"Well, that's not really fair, is it?"

"No, but what about any of this was fair to you? Might as well keep the streak going until we're done." Akira snorts as she walks him to the door, hand in hand.

"Well. This is it, then?" They stop next to the door, Akira taking her other hand in his.

"Yep. End of the line, buddy."

"No last kiss?"

"Not a chance."

"Damn. Well..." He stoops, kissing the back of her hand gently before releasing both of her hands and opening the door. "I'll see you tomorrow, then."

"Don't forget your homework, I told Sojiro's daughter I emailed it to you."

"And of course she didn't tell me that...Oh well. Long night ahead of me."

"Better get to it, then." She makes a shooing gesture. "If you don't mind."

"Right." He steps outside, staring back at her like he has one last thing to say, but thinks better of it, walking down the walkway, down the stairs and out of Kawakami's life. She closes the door, and leans her back against it. Sliding to the floor, tears starting at a trickle and quickly growing to an unmanageable bawling fit that continues until Kawakami finally drags herself to bed hours later. She leaves the S+A ring in her bedside table that night.

**Author's Note:**

> I lied, I'm definitely not sorry at all ha HA. Kawakami's whole deal is endlessly fascinating to me because i thrive on human misery and good(ish) people doing bad things to try to survive, so here we are. Maybe I'll write something nice and sweet for her again someday. I've got some ideas floating around, but you know, gestures vaguely at clock


End file.
